[v2] Chapter Twenty-two – In which Ark spends some time bonding with an extremely sequestered goblin.

[v2] Chapter Twenty-two – In which Ark spends some time bonding with an extremely sequestered goblin.

“Mags, you’re keeping an eye on things for us, yes?”

I didn’t need to see her to know Magpie was likely observing us from somewhere up in the trees. It was a rare occasion to spend time with Wise-eyes, the daughter I made with Old One who was born about a week after Nova. I can’t say I approve of how Old One is choosing to raise her, by sequestering her away and teaching her whatever it is that she is, but on the rare moments when I get to spend time with her, naturally I want her to have a good time.

“Husband... can... you continue the story from last time?”

“Sure. But where did I leave off... do you remember?”

“I remember! The Paladin had just defeated the wicked Light Elf and obtained the Land Crystal. Then together with the Monk, the Artificer, and the Old Sage they boarded the Red Wings and went to the tower where the Saintess was being held by the Dragon Knight and the Dark Lord.”

“Ah, that’s right. We left off after the heroes defeated the three sisters and their special unity magic. Let’s see... after that, they continued to climb the tower, eventually reaching the top floor. When they reached the room where the Saintess was being held, they came across the Dragon Knight standing outside the door along with the Dark Lord who thanked the heroes for coming. The Old Sage was furious, shouting out the name of the wicked man who had killed his only daughter. The Paladin had demanded to know where the Saintess was, but the Dark Lord wanted the crystal first before telling him.”

“Ooh! It’s about to get really good now!”

“Promising that no harm had come to the Saintess, the Paladin handed over the Land Crystal only to find that the Dark Lord had no intention of returning the Saintess at all and had betrayed the entire party. The Old Sage was furious calling the Dark Lord a foul traitor! The Dark Lord said he had no business with the Old Sage, but that meant nothing to the Old Sage who had come prepared to take revenge for his daughter!”

I then dramatically set the stage for one of the most climactic moments in the game that I could remember.

“The Old Sage pushed aside the Paladin and said that he had unfinished business with the Dark Lord! This is for Bananna!! He shouted before engaging the Dark Lord in a battle of magic. While the Dark Lord was undaunted by what he thought was only feeble magic that the Old Sage could use, he endured the spells that were cast upon him. The poison magic—Virulence! Immediately followed by the rupturing blaze magic—Firaga! The Dark Lord taunted the Old Sage saying that there was no way anyone could ever defeat him!”

I had tapped into an illusory enchantment while narrating the epic fight and made the magic being cast by the Old Sage look a bit stylish and grand. Wise-eyes focus was entirely on me acting out the story.

“The Old Sage still had powerful spells at his disposal. The next one he cast was heaven’s judgment—Thundaga! But even that bounced off of the black armor the Dark Lord wore. Then came huge spears of piercing ice—Blizzaga! Yet still, the Dark Lord stood there, undamaged and disinterested. Feeling despair that all of his strongest spells did nothing to the Dark Lord, the Old Sage decided that there was one spell that he had left to cast... it would also be the final spell he would ever cast.”

“Wait, is it going to be the spell he got from the mountain of trials when the Twins were in the party!?” Wise-eyes squealed with anticipation.

“The Old Sage reached deep inside of his body, pulling every drop of mana from within to cast the most powerful magic that had finally been unsealed—The Meteor Storm! Hearing the Old Sage say the name of the ancient magic, his Paladin friend had shouted at him not to use it. The Monk agreed, shouting out that using it would destroy him. But the Old Sage was determined. Dark Lord! I’m sacrificing my life here... to defeat YOU!”

“Do it, Old Sage!!” Wise-eyes shouted out with the rolling momentum.

“Tendrils of magic mixed together with the remaining life force had come together to complete the ultimate magic which had been unsealed for just this moment! The Old Sage, coughing up some blood, held his hand up in the air and the air trembled with chaos. Meteor Storm!! Came the cry from the Old Sage. Tearing through the fabric of space all around him, the very air screeched with the sound of thousands of huge burning boulders which came speeding down to crash into the Dark Lord.”

“Yeah!!”

“Im-impossible...! Shouted the Dark Lord, refusing to admit that the Old Sage’s final spell had done nearly fatal damage to himself. But in the end, the Dark Lord still remained standing. The Old Sage, however, no longer could, and fell to the ground. The Paladin, Monk, and Artificer all gathered around their fallen comrade. The Dark Lord realized that he would be in trouble if he stuck around in his weakened state to fight the remaining heroes, so he called for the Dragon Knight to escape with him, but the Dragon Knight had been hit by one of the Meteors and wasn’t responding. The mind control the Dark Lord had over the Dragon Knight had been severed. Seeing as he had no other choice, the Dark Lord went to escape, only to be grabbed by the Paladin, looking to end things once and for all.”

Wise-eyes appeared to be shocked by the turn of events.

“We will settle this score some other time, Paladin! The Dark Lord said, firing a bolt of lightning from his fingertip which hit the Paladin and sent him flying into the tower wall before he finally escaped. Recovering quickly, the Paladin joined the others once more at the Old Sage’s side. Somehow, he was still conscious, and lamenting that he had failed in taking revenge for his daughter’s death. Paladin... I failed because I lost myself in hatred. Please, promise me... that you will avenge my daughter in my stead. I’m... no longer able to... His words trailed off and his body went limp. The Old Sage had died. The trio of heroes who were left prayed for the soul of the Old Sage to be at rest and join his daughter in the next life. They swore then and there to accept his wish and avenge both the Old Sage and his murdered daughter.”

“Noooo! After all that, the Dark Lord got away!?!? Just about everyone has died trying to stop him! The valley of Fog, the kingdom of Dancing, Tremble castle, The Summoner and Bard who got eaten by the King of the Sea, the Twins... now the Old Sage!”

I’d say I was concerned about her getting emotional here, but I was a young boy still not yet in my teens when I first saw the scene and I admit... I cried a little here.

“Wise-eyes... there’s still a lot more of the story. Why, I think we’re getting close to the halfway point of it.”

“It’s still not done?”

“Oh no. Just because the Dark Lord has all the crystals now, we’re going to stumble across something really interesting.”

“What happened to the Saintess? Is she dead?”

“Not at all. She’s in the next room. The Paladin is about to rescue her.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. Not only that, but the Dragon Knight is also going to rejoin the heroes and fight along with the Paladin again like they did at the beginning!”

“...is... the Old Sage really together with his daughter in the next life?”

I wrapped an arm around my daughter and hugged her tightly.

“Of course. And... I’ll tell you a secret. We’ll be hearing from him again just before the end of the story.”

“He’s alive!?”

“Nope. That’s what makes it even better.”

“How is that better!?”

“You’ll see. But for now, how about we do what we came out here to do and practice some magic?”

With a little sniffle, Wise-eyes nodded her head.

“Can... you cast that spell? The Meteor Swarm?”

“I’ve never tried. It’s a really powerful spell and could cause a lot of damage and draw a lot of attention. Plus, the Great Protector might get really mad at me if I go destroying the forest... But there are a whole lot of other spells we can try.”

My private magic lessons with Wise-eyes were somewhat similar to my Martial Arts lessons with Button. All the magic I tried to teach her was based on spells I had seen in video games and table-top role-playing games from my past life. Magic was extremely flexible provided you had the right will and intent to direct it. Wise-eyes was very much a Force magician like me, so my methods of teaching her had high compatibility.

She could already cast the full range of elemental magic, as well as some supportive spells such as group levitation, hasting, and even dispelling magic. But as a magician, I can’t cast curative or healing spells.

“What about a Summoning spell? Like Bokoboko!”

“Hmm, I can’t say I’ve ever tried. While I don’t know for certain that this is the case, Summoning magic should require you to have met a powerful monster before and have some kind of contract established between you two that will allow you to summon them in the first place.”

Truthfully, I didn’t have the first clue as to how I might summon a powerful creature in the context that Wise-eyes wanted. It took more than just visualizing it and wanting it to happen. I have to consider the nature of the spell I want to cast. Teleportation is very... iffy, otherwise I would have used it to escape long ago. I was only willing to try this because I had my quartz focus orb as part of the deal to train Wise-eyes while having access to my full range of magic.

“I’ll give it a try, but be ready to attack it if things go badly, okay?”

“Okay.”

“That goes for you too, Mags!” I said, speaking a little louder towards the treetops.

Figurine leaned her head against my chest, her ear resting right on the spot my heart lay underneath.

“If you don’t have anyone you’re already planning to visit tonight, would you like to come to my cave-hole? I’ve been working on a song using the blow-shell...”

Her hand came up and a thin, sharp, pointed finger began to trace itself around my chest.

“And you want to invite me to listen?”

She giggled a bit.

“Maybe after listening... we can get... lazy together?”

I do believe I am being seduced right now. It’s... kind of cute.

“How lazy are we talking?”

Her wandering finger trailed down towards my loincloth tracing over this cylindrical mass just beneath.

“As lazy as you want to get.”

I got the feeling there was going to be a lot of hard work before any of that laziness happened.

“Alright my little canary. If you’re going to tempt me like this, it would be rude of me to refuse.”

I stroked her hair and let her continue teasing me a bit more. Things have been progressing well around here lately, and I saw no reason I couldn’t spoil her with a bit of my hard to come by attention.

“I’ll stop by after I have dinner with the Orcs.”

Satiating Figurine with a promise that she would have company later this evening, she left with a hum in her step.

Not too much longer after, another pair of arms wrapped around my body. Only this pair didn’t have any flesh covering at all. The list of suspects was immense.

“Beastie. Would you like to sit with me?”

Unlike Figurine, the reanimated skeleton of Beast-talker went right into sitting in my lap. I hadn’t seen her since the events that happened in Lily’s room with Primrose. I was glad she decided to stop avoiding me. Even if she’s a skeleton, she’s not frightening in the least.

Much like Figurine had, Beastie turned her head and rested it against my chest, though it was more like the bit of muscle near my arm right below my collarbone. I caressed her skull softly, wondering if she felt it in the same way one of the other goblins might. She might be dead-ish, but I still considered her to be one of my wives.

She lifted her head away from my chest for a moment, only to point at her mouth and then at my shoulder.

“You want to bite?”

Her skeletal head nodded.

Beastie didn’t eat, and from a visual inspection, it didn’t look like there was any detritus to be found around her teeth. Beastie was also prone to visiting the bath together with Bitey and Ebony, so I figured what the hell. Why not let her?

Giving her my approval, she went for my shoulder slowly and with a very controlled bite, sunk her teeth into it. She reached down to lift my loincloth up a little, revealing my cock which had been relaxed until Figurine had awakened it from slumber with her teasing. She slid forward, letting it slide uncontested through her open pelvis, reaching inside herself and adjusting it so that the head of my cock pressed against the interior part of her coccyx bone. Then she wrapped her bony arms around my back and... did nothing except for shifting her hips very slowly so that only the most minimal rubbing occurred.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to her in this bizarre moment, so I just continued to stroke her skull and around her shoulder area.

Was she feeling good? Did my blood have the same effect on her that it did the others?

I can’t imagine that it did, but without Ebony to speak to her bones, it would remain her secret until she deigned to tell me. Without flesh and muscle, her skeletal frame was light. And yet, it somehow felt lighter as she leaned her entire bony body against my own. With no internal heat, they were cool to the touch, but again, I considered her my wife and if this was how she could receive the affection she was denied in life, I wasn’t going to push her away.

Instead, something perverse inside of me told me to run a finger along the back of her spine. Starting with her lowest lumbar, I traced a bumpy path upwards, slowly, until I reached her neck. While I did so, I felt her teeth dig a bit deeper. This strange eroticism continued until she finally retracted her mouth from my shoulder, her teeth dyed a crimson red, dripping some blood onto her lower jaw.

I raised a hand to her face and cupped the side of her mouth, looking her straight into her empty sockets.

“Was it good for you?” I asked, genuinely interested in what just happened.

She nodded her head for a moment before shifting her attention away from me entirely and towards the entrance of Goblinhome.

“Is Ebony calling for you?”

Beastie clacked her jaw, in what I can only imagine was a bit of frustration.

“We can resume this another time if you’d like?”

Beastie nodded her head and stood up, staring at me with her empty eyes until she could no longer and left me alone as she entered Goblinhome.

With no end to the interruptions, Orga Lush appeared from nowhere, thankfully not crushing me from behind with an orcish bear-hug.

“War Chief is so mighty that even Kah Kamon seeks to mate with him.”

“Kah Kamon? What’s that?”

“Not what, but who. Kah Kamon is the one you meet at the end of your life.”

“Death?”

“There is more to Kah Kamon than only death.”

I nodded along, not knowing anything about orcish superstitions.

“I don’t really think of Beastie as the embodiment of death or anything. She might be dead, and also undead, but she retains some of her personality from when she was alive. If she wants to continue her existence believing she is one of my goblin wives, then that’s perfectly fine with me. I see no reason to deny her that small mercy... if it is one.”

Orga Lush and I talked about how our cultures approached death for a short while, until the rest of my war-brides joined us, Rushk included, and they prepared dinner for us all to share. Orga Lush said nothing of my... spooky rendezvous with Beastie. Instead, I informed my newest wives that I was booked for the evening, but that I would spend the day tomorrow taking care of all their needs.

Krushka seemed quite pleased with that promise.

There was also the expected news from Rushk. She felt something inside of her, to which Stella had dragged her to Vera who pretty much confirmed it. Rushk was now pregnant. Like Stella, only a partial goblinization occurred with Rushk, and she was still treated as if she was a full orc by the rest of my war-brides.

There remained no sign of any changes with the other three, deepening the mystery of what exactly were the prerequisites were to goblinizing someone.

After an enjoyable dinner, my feet led me back into Goblinhome to enjoy the invitation of a very musical goblin...